


Confetti and White Roses

by LadyLuckDoubt



Category: Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Phoenix Wright Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-16
Updated: 2011-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-17 00:51:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLuckDoubt/pseuds/LadyLuckDoubt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miles realises sometimes it's possible to leave things unsaid for too long, and that people and the world won't wait for you. And that sometimes, when you truly love someone, you have to let them go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Confetti and White Roses

**Author's Note:**

> _Dah. This anon wants angst, but I'm not so sure if this has been done._
> 
>  _Phoenix and Iris' wedding day. Miles angsting. Phoenix realizes his feelings to Miles but it's too late._
> 
>  _Dah. Dah. I'm done._
> 
> Another request from the Phoenix Wright Kink Meme, filled just after I got home from a night shift and just before I fell asleep, I remember.

The day had arrived. You wore black which wouldn't have been out of place, but you also wore the expression of someone attending a funeral.

You remained silent and distant, and everyone assumed that was just how you were. Miles Edgeworth, the quiet, removed one. The one who couldn't deal with other people's emotions, who had such a vast lack of understanding about what drove people to do stupid things like publicly commit to one another for life that he didn't get it and could only look on, possibly masking vague disgust and confusion. Maybe they thought you were sad because Wright's father was there, and they all knew now, what had happened to your father when you were nine years old, and no matter what happened or who decided that you weren't irreparably damaged and were worth a life committment-- your father-- and mother-- would never witness that moment that Wright's parents have. 

You want to hate the girl but you don't. You can't, there's nothing to hate there. From the moment Phoenix seemed intrigued by her, you were on a mission. You wanted them to hook up together, you wanted them to find happiness-- and then things hit a crossroad. Part of you wanted this day, white roses and baby's breath and happily-ever-afters, Phoenix rushing around in a striking grey suit looking frazzled but so overjoyed that seeing him just now, so casually, makes your heart shatter some more-- and part of you wanted to see them attempt something so that it would fail. 

Because you're only human and because you wanted the universe to offer some sort of indication that you and him really were meant to be together. You wanted the world to offer a signal, and you're still not sure if it went wrong or it went right. 

 _50% of marriages end in divorce_  goes through your mind, and you find yourself scratching viciously at your wrist with self-loathing at that thought. Just who the hell are you, anyway? You're supposed to be one of his closest friends. You hate yourself for wanting him this much, you hate yourself for having worked so hard, pushed so much, to bring them together. You want to hate him for not realising, you want to hate the girl for being so... bland and inoffensive and indistinguishable-- but you can't. He's your best friend and this is his special day, so you're going to sit through this and when the reception comes about, you're going to drink as much as you can because hailing an early cab and getting home hopefully by which time you'll be too drunk to think about it too much. His honeymoon will be your hangover. 

How romantic. 

You watch him dart in and out of the crowd, as though looking for someone or something, you wonder where the bride is. You think about how this is meant to be her day, yet you see the childlike exuberance on his face and you realise that it's his, too. You're doing your utmost to be happy for him, and it's killing you, even though you spent so long trying to get them to this stage; in the abstract, you wanted him married to some nice girl; you wanted him to have some semblance of a normal life with someone kind and simple, someone who wasn't a psychological ghost town, someone he didn't have to worry about-- and you know he  _would_  have worried about you if he'd even been attracted to you-- you were prepared to sacrifice the one thing that could have made you happy-- him-- for his happiness.

And he'll never know. 

You don't want to meet his eyes, and you don't want to talk to him. You're going to let him do this, see him off, see him happy, and fade out again afterwards. Go back to Germany. Throw your life into work. Forget about people, forget about relationships, forget about the fact that for a few years, a simple smile and a confession and a wit and intelligence that was equal to your own somehow managed to get under your skin and have unwavering faith in you. 

You'll try to forget him in the way he's going to forget about you. You were an emotional experiment, he was your moment of intensity, something to cruelly shake your world up and show you that you still have feelings, but that when you do have them, they're entirely wasted and pointless and that it's better off not having them at all.

He's moving towards you. It'll shatter you, but if it will make him happy, you'll listen.

You're silently praying that he doesn't really want to talk to you, that already some part of him has started forgetting about you, because that would be like the universe giving you a sign that it's acceptable to forget about him. 

The trouble with being a pessimist, though, is that you can just about live without hope-- except for a few small things, the only things you could invest anything into, and unlike everything else, you need absolutes before you can discount them. That's why you're waiting for  _"And now, you may kiss the bride."_  That's why you want to see them cut the cake, have the first dance, sign the registry papers; you need these things as your absolute and for your closure. Until then, there will always be an irritatingly, disgustingly persistent spark of hope, and you need to extinguish it. 

He's moving towards you. You try not to look so stiff; you're one of his best friends, he asked you to be best man, for crying out loud, and if Franziska hadn't conveniently given birth a month ago, you probably wouldn't have had the excuse to get out of it. You owe him a false smile and all the best wishes in the world. And you really want nothing for him but the most sublime, beautiful happiness. He deserves that. If Iris dare even  _think_  about deceiving him again, lying to him like that, destroying that beautiful humanitarian streak within him, the world will see, and you will silently promise this as they make their vows-- an evil more harsh and final than anything Dahlia Hawthorne could come up with. 

You owe him that. He's the closest to a friend you've had. 

He walks up to you, with a puppylike gait, he's giddy, he's excited, like his heart's about ready to explode but for an entirely different reason to the way yours possibly has. This is his day for a future filled with light and happiness. This is the day you become an emotional wasteland.

"Miles!" You're not standing near anyone, and the fact that he's bothered to seek you out like this makes you want to burst into tears, but you can't. For his sake, of course.

"Well, Wright, I see it's all gone to plan." You keep your voice perfectly steady and even. 

"I know... who'd have thought?" He sounded bewildered and stunned, like a child watching a meteor shower, and you can't hate him, you can't hate her, you just hate yourself and the universe's awful sense of humour.

He chuckles nervously. "I can't believe it, honestly." He produces the locket from around his neck; there's a picture of his daughter on one side, and now a picture of her. Front-facing, you never realised until now that she looks a bit like you. The same pale skin, the same dark hair with silvering highlights, the same expression of demure calm on her face. 

"Believe it," you say. "You're one lucky man." He is. That he's managed to go through so much and yet manage to find love; simply and intensely with one person, so easily; you mean what you say but you can't let him in on just how lucky he really is because to tell him why, you'd be revealing a truth about yourself that he doesn't need to know. 

"I just wanted to say thankyou for all that you've done for us." 

You smile, tilt your head down, determined not to sniff, not to betray your desire for his happiness with a few pointless, angst-driven tears. Why be selfish and ruin what might be the best day of his life with your own selfish issues?  _This_  is what love is. Loving someone enough to want them to find happiness even though the glimmer in his eyes, the giddy smile on his face, is burning into your soul and will cut you to pieces when it's all over and you're alone and you can cry about it. 

"No problem," you say, and your voice feels light and hollow and insincere. You're lying to him, probably as much as Iris has, but this is quite sincerely for his own damn good.  _Go_ , you want to say,  _Get away from me and get married and have your happily ever after_.

"I still wish you could have been my best man... I mean, Larry's been kind of hopeless." He chuckles. "And with all your help... you  _should_  have been."

All your help. You were the one who told him where to get the suit, you were the one who told him what cut suited his still-beautiful figure and what colour scheme brought out his eyes. You were the one who got him the deal on the reception centre. You were the one who suggested the white roses and confetti and who raised all manner of hell to the florist when they said that they couldn't do that many floral arrangements on such short notice. 

It was like you were planning your own godammned wedding, it was as close as you'd get, and you wanted it perfect for him because he deserved nothing less than perfect. Always has, always will. 

"I love you, Miles." 

And with that statement, it's like someone's dropped a rock down your throat. You can't say anything because something horrible has happened and the rock's made tears spring to the back of your eyes but he deserves a brave face from you, to never know about this. 

You can't say anything, but when you feel him crushed against you, one of those strange, automatic hugs that tactile, touchy-feely types do, you gasp slightly, like you're choking. You hate him for doing this to you, but you can't because he's completely innocent; he has no  _mens rea_ , no motive, no idea what he's doing. 

And then you feel his face buried into your shoulder and you know that you're going to have to be the strong one. Every fear and doubt and question that might have run through his head comes to the surface now, and this is precisely why you didn't want to be his best man, why you were back in Germany oohing and ahhing and making the appropriate noises of fascination and awe about a squirming, pink-skinned infant who could have been an alien for all you could make of it. 

You offer hollow comfort, your arm automatically goes to his back and you pat it, eliciting a great sob from him at the same time. It's like he's crying for the both of you. And then he murmurs something into your shoulder, and there are tears and snot and saliva, and you don't even care that this is a three-thousand-dollar suit any more; you just hold him and let him cry. 

You long, selfishly, for someone to approach him, for someone to make him-- and  _this_  go away. But there are no rescues and no respite. 

He pulls back, then tries to look you in the eye. 

"I sometimes wondered if this could have been  _us_ ," he says with a sad boyish chuckle. You can't look at him because if he means what he's saying in the same way as you're interpreting it, and that could only be the most horrible, bitter twist of irony imaginable. 

You snort with what you hope sounds like derision instead. 

"...This, you know... the wedding. The flowers. The suits. All our friends and families here, everyone just coming together to make the day special for us." 

You're stunned and disgusted and speechless. And you release him from your grasp roughly. "Don't be stupid, Wright," you sneer angrily, "That's just pre-nuptial jitters." You pause, deciding masochistically to push things along a notch. "I seem to have at least one chromosome that doesn't interest you." It doesn't make sense and you doubt he'll grasp it, but you have to sneer, you have to make stupidly snarky comments, because the alternative is to go to pieces in his arms, and you're not doing that to him on the best day of his life.

"It's... not really like that," he says. There's a rotten chokey sound in his voice. "I sometimes wondered," he says vaguely, "How different life would have been if you'd been attracted to me. You know, like  _that_. I mean, I know I'm not smart and detached and clever like you are, but..." And he trails off, and he's sounding frantic and bewildered. 

"It never occurred to you that our differences would have torn us to pieces and made us despise one another even more than we did when we first ran into one another in court?" you sneer. He's not going to hear the lump in your throat, hopefully he's too dumb and oblivious to see the tears in the corners of your eyes. 

"I never despised you," he says quietly. "I was always in  _awe_  of you. You were the first person I encountered who I felt was an equal, who understood me, who challenged me..." Godammit, he's sniffling. "While I stumbled around, Miles, you always knew what you were doing, you always had the answers that I didn't, and you had it all figured out before I had the faintest idea what was going on." 

  
He sniffles again, and you're torn between wanting to hold him, longing to walk -- no, run-- away, and wanting to slap him hard in the face.

"You're about to get married," you say evenly. "You're about to embark upon the biggest adventure of your life." Anything. Sappy and pathetic and full of that sentimental bullshit that emotional types go in for, you want to tell him  _fuck off_  in the nicest way possible.

"I don't think we'd have destroyed one another, Miles," he says sadly. "I think we'd have worked around that and had some spectacular debates, but ultimately, we'd have complimented one another." He's staring out into the distance, towards the small crowd that's gathered. More than anything, you want a drink now, or a camera in your hand to capture the expression on his face.  _So this is what the great Phoenix Wright looks like when you strip down all the optimism and the layers and the image. He could possibly be nearly as pathetic as me._  A rotten part of you wants to pinch yourself that you're not dreaming, and you want the way he looks now captured forever, so later on you can't convince yourself that it was only you seeing what you wanted to see. It would be decisive evidence. 

You can't tell him that, and you can't let him ruin his life. 

"The biggest adventure I had was passing my bar exam. And eventually finding you again." He sounds like a deflating balloon.

"You're speaking nonsense," you tell him sharply. "I don't know what you think you're talking about, and I don't know why you think I'd have had any kind of lifelong romantic notions towards you, either." You're getting angry now; isn't it  _Larry's_  job to deal with this overly emotional bullshit? Once again, his flakiness has had disastrous and complicated repercussions. 

You're shaking, but you can't let him see that either. 

"I was right," he says, defeated. You realise what you've done. Your head's congratulating you in a cool, rational manner, your heart is screaming and writhing and thumping against your chest, and they're doing battle with one another about how you're going to react physically. It will all be okay when you get to the reception. You can drink there. You keep telling yourself that, like a mantra. 

"You were," you say, with the fakest, worst smile you've had to procure for anyone else. "Now go get married." You pat him on the back in an exuberant, overly-manly type of way that _pals_ do. But you're not his pal any more. There's now a distant sharpness to his gaze, and he turns away from you, readying himself to walk back to the other people. 

"Go on," you tell him. "You know you want to."  _Lies_. Does that sound overly bitter from you? Possibly. Did you mean to? Of course not. _Lies._

"I always just wanted you to be happy," he says, not facing you. "But I guess I wasn't good enough." He pauses. "But then again, no one ever will be, will they?" 

More lies. 

Your head's now joined your screaming heart, but you let him walk down the incline of the hill, and off to his wedding. You feel horrible that you've gotten answers from him, and like you've somehow unintentionally ruined the most important day of his life. 

  
When she's walking down the aisle and a flood of tears overtakes you, his parents hug you warmly and think it's because you're so goddamned happy for him. They, too, asked why you weren't his best man.

You book your flight back to Germany from your cell phone in the men's room, before the reception has barely started. You can't bring yourself to see their first dance nor hear his thankyou speech.

 

You hope he's wrong, and that you've let him walk away into the biggest adventure of his life.


End file.
